Posted on 10/31/2007 11:58:37 AM PDT by tuffydoodle
Somebody should tell teenage girls that a high school homecoming is no place for a Carmen Electra lap dance.
And by somebody, I don't mean the stodgy Argyle school superintendent.
High school girls themselves should tell one another to turn around. Stop grinding. Make the boys look up.
Parents should demand it.
If you think I'm just old and out of touch with teenagers -- ask a counselor.
In all the reams of news coverage about Argyle High School's crackdown on "dirty dancing" and its homecoming-night cleavage ban, I have yet to see anyone ask a counselor whether rumped-up dancing is psychologically healthy for girls.
So I asked.
"This is all about wanting to be noticed, and boys definitely notice," said Carolyn Kern, a University of North Texas associate professor and director of the school's successful Counseling and Human Development Center.
"But provocative dancing isn't going to get these girls what they really want. They get attention. But they want an emotional connection."
That doesn't happen with your backside turned.
The flap about Argyle's homecoming dance has now stretched across three weeks.
New Superintendent Jason Ceyanes, 34, a straight-arrow type from an ultraconservative Houston suburb, has apologized for a surprise dance-night crackdown against spaghetti-strap dresses and plunging necklines.
But he still says he might "bring in dance instructors" to teach students other dances -- perhaps the foxtrot.
After two public meetings -- including a special trustees' meeting Monday -- school officials now promise to let parents help revise the dress code by Nov. 9. In other words, school officials are listening.
But some parents, and even one local newspaper, also seem to think Argyle officials should quit worrying about the "freak dancing" or "dirty dancing" that was interrupted at the homecoming dance.
In an editorial, the Denton Record-Chronicle wrote that schoolteachers shouldn't have to worry about whether teenagers "shake too much booty" and generally made it sound as if adults were wasting their time policing dances.
Look, I don't think Ceyanes' idea will work. I don't think teenagers want to learn the waltz. (Maybe the cha-cha.)
But I also don't think parents and school officials can just let every school dance turn into tuxed-up Greco-Roman wrestling.
And if some parents think low, hip-grinding dances are OK for high school seniors, then what age is too young?
Sophomores? Middle school? The Little Miss Argyle pageant?
The Argyle dispute "is a picture of what's going on today in society," Kern said.
"We're struggling to define what's OK for young people and at what age," she said. "A lot of research says that adolescents aren't emotionally ready to be sexually active, from a psychological perspective. But here they are, and we're left struggling over where to set boundaries."
What's fun -- and what's hurtful?
Unlike some national experts, Kern didn't go so far as to say that suggestive dancing is particularly demeaning to women or that it reduces teenage girls to faceless, twistable toys for boys.
But she did say that girls risk more.
"They don't realize that they're sending the message, 'This is what I want.' They might have to explain later that it's not what they want. That explanation might not be easy."
Argyle school board President Debbie Cantrell, a doctor, has defended students. They're not "dirty," she said, and she wishes we wouldn't describe the dances that way.
"We have some very good, intelligent young adults who stood up at our meetings and said, 'We don't know any other way to dance,'" she said.
All they have to do is turn around.
She’d be/ is jealious. But then again, I know she danced with guys before I met her, and she knows that I love her, so it really has never been an issue.
There is another problem that isn’t getting much attention. My son is a senior in High School. My wife and I have tried to teach him morals and to treat people with respect and courtesy. I think his morals are probably better than mine have ever been . He has told me that he wouldn’t have anything to do with most of the girls in his school because of the way they act. Judging from the things I have seen and heard, I tend to agree with him. He has enough trouble without messing around with young whores.
“As long as at the end of the night she isn’t in the back seat of somebody’s car, any daughter I have can dance basically how she wants. No nakedness and no sex afterwards”
The grinding is so graphic now you almost swear there are unplanned pregnancies occurring right on the dance floor.
No need for the back seat of a car.
Don’t sweat it, that kind of personal attack and condemnation permeates these threads. The irony is that most of the more aggressive think they’re nice people.
Agreed. Every dojo I’ve ever taught at had a no juvenile black belt policy. Acrobatic nonsense seems to permeate the schools who regularly promote kids to black belt. However, it does seem to win open tournaments. Real martial arts with history and foundation seem to be sneered at by the back flipping crowd.
That's never a fair question, because the answer is always no. I have two daughters, one 28 and one who'll be 14 in a few weeks. As a father, you never want anyone to touch them, not even their husbands. I comfort myself regularly by pretending that the oldest and her husband don't really have sexual relations and that my granddaughter is a miracle from heaven. Much the same way when my parents were alive that I comforted myself by pretending that they never had sex either.
Smart people will recognize that as an overly protective emotional response and temper it accordingly. Smart parents know that teenagers are a blink away from being adults, and testing the boundries is a part of growing up. To hear it here, most freepers were completely asexual as teenagers with no hormone driven desires at all.
As much as parents hate to hear it. Young people today are a lot like young people were when I was young, and when my parents were young. They'll date, they'll kiss, they'll pet and some of them will have sex before their ready. It's life, and you can't stop it.
Goodness gracious. What are you doing with a picture of Hillary’s butt?
That was a truly great post. I think that some folks here believe that sex is a bad thing when it isn’t (given the right circumstances and conditions).
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